After many months of diplomatic wrangling, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was granted another lease of life at the annual ministerial council meeting last week in a messy compromise between Russia and the west. But rather than ushering in a period of renewed efforts to mend Europe’s broken security order, existing faultlines have deepened and new ones have emerged.
The OSCE traces its roots back to a period of serious attempts at detente between the US and the USSR during the 1970s. It’s now the world’s largest regional security organisation with 57 participating states encompassing three continents – North America, Europe and Asia. Yet its ability to fulfil its mandate of providing security has been severely compromised in recent years.
While the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was the latest and most egregious violation of the OSCE’s fundamental principles, it was not the first. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the subsequent recognition of the independence of the Kremlin-supported breakaway states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August was followed, in 2014, by the annexation of Crimea and occupation of parts of Donbas.
Russia has also deliberately undermined the OSCE’s existing missions in Ukraine. The “Observer Mission ”, which was set up in July 2014 to monitor activity at key Russian-Ukrainian border checkpoints in eastern Ukraine was discontinued in September 2021.
Meanwhile the “Special Monitoring Mission”,........